On an eighteenth-century Earth crippled by alchemical disaster, a
secret American cabal led by Benjamin Franklin strives to prevent the
annihilation of humankind
The dark magic that the great alchemist Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently
unleashed with his discovery of philosopher's mercury has taken a
devastating toll on Earth: The destruction of Europe and the advent of
eternal winter have aided the mysterious malakim in their apparent quest
for the annihilation of the human race.
In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin hones his alchemical skills
and prepares the Junto--his secret cabal of scientists, Native American
tribesmen, former slaves, and fugitive European intellectuals--for the
upcoming battle for humankind's survival as the army of the Scottish
"pretender" king James Stuart invades the continent to reestablish
British dominion.
Meanwhile, on the other side of a shockingly diminished world, in the
court of the mysteriously vanished Peter the Great, the missing tsar's
chief alchemist, Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, prepares to depart
Russia in search of her lost son, who may well be at the heart of the
conspiracy of malevolent angels to eliminate the human scourge.
The third volume in author Greg Keyes's ingenious Age of Unreason
alternate history series, Empire of Unreason broadens the story,
elevates the action, and reveals secrets within secrets as the surviving
inhabitants of this different, endangered world race frantically toward
a climactic confrontation.
